The present invention relates to a speech processing system, apparatus, and method that use a terminal (client) and server which can be connected to a network, and a storage medium.
Speech recognition is a promising technique as a user interface of a compact apparatus such as a portable terminal or the like. However, it is hard for a portable terminal to implement elaborate speech recognition that requires a large processing volume due to limited resources (the processing performance of a CPU, memory size, and the like) and cost.
As a means for solving such problem, a client-server speech recognition system may be built. In this system, the portable terminal (client) executes light processes, and the server executes heavy processes.
However, upon building such a client-server speech recognition system, balance among the load on the client, the data transfer amount between the client and server, recognition time, and recognition ratio must be taken into consideration.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the aforementioned problems, and has as its object to provide a speech processing system, apparatus, and method which can implement elaborate speech recognition while suppressing the amount of data transfer between the client and server, and a storage medium.
In order to achieve the above object, a speech processing system according to the present invention is characterized by comprising the following arrangement.
That is, there is provided a speech processing system in which speech information is input at a client side, and speech recognition is done at a server side,
the client comprising:
acoustic analysis means for generating speech parameters by acoustically analyzing speech information;
encoding means for compression-encoding the speech parameters; and
transmission means for transmitting the compressed-encoded speech parameters, and
the server comprising:
reception means for receiving the compression-encoded speech parameters; and
speech recognition means for making speech recognition using the speech parameters received by the reception means.
A speech processing apparatus according to the present invention is characterized by comprising, e.g., the following arrangement.
That is, there is provided a speech processing apparatus comprising:
acoustic analysis means for generating speech parameters by acoustically analyzing speech information;
encoding means for compression-encoding the speech parameters; and
transmission means for transmitting the speech parameters compressed-encoded by the encoding means.
A speech processing apparatus according to the present invention is characterized by comprising, e.g., the following arrangement.
That is, there is provided a speech processing apparatus comprising:
reception means for receiving compression-encoded speech parameters; and
speech recognition means for making speech recognition using the speech parameters received by the reception means.
A speech processing method according to the present invention is characterized by comprising, e.g., the following arrangement.
That is, there is provided a speech processing method in which speech information is input at a client side, and speech recognition is done at a server side,
the client comprising:
the acoustic analysis step of generating speech parameters by acoustically analyzing speech information;
the encoding step of compression-encoding the speech parameters; and
the transmission step of transmitting the compressed-encoded speech parameters, and
the server comprising:
the reception step of receiving the compression-encoded speech parameters; and
the speech recognition step of making speech recognition using the speech parameters received in the reception step.
A speech processing method according to the present invention is characterized by comprising, e.g., the following arrangement.
That is, there is provided a speech processing method comprising:
the reception step of receiving compression-encoded speech parameters; and
the speech recognition step of making speech recognition using the speech parameters received in the reception step.
A storage medium according to the present invention is characterized by comprising, e.g., the following arrangement. That is, a storage medium stores a control program for making a computer implement the speech processing method.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference characters designate the same or similar parts throughout the figures thereof.